What we learned at Club Week

B!G had the privilege of meeting Schulich’s undergraduates last week at the student club fair.

Ye Olde Student Club Faire.

It was a lot more fun than anyone thought it would be, despite our bitch-like position at the back of the basement squashed in beside rows of lockers and despite the fact that we really don’t need to do any recruitment. The club week did provide an interesting opportunity for me and the other B!G execs to practice our sales pitch. By the end of the week we were spilling lines like “we’re a student marketing agency and we deliver real solutions to real clients” like nobody’s business. Here are a few of my favorite pitch lines:

“Unlike a lot of the other organizations here, our members actually stay active”
“Networking and info sessions can only get you so far. In marketing, it doesn’t matter who know you, it matters what you know”
“Read the blog! Today’s post is about pubic hair marketing!”

The last line was perhaps the most effective and generated some of the highest blog traffic we’ve ever seen. I guess fiffi trimming is a big selling point for the undergraduate students here at Schulich.

In addition to refining our pitch, the club fair had a few lasting impressions on us. Here’s what we learned:

1. FEAR!

There’s a lot of trepidation and uncertainty among the undergrad population, especially the first years. However, this anxiety seems to mutate into an untested, ballsy arrogance in second, third, and fourth years!

2. Self-assuredness should never be confused with rudeness

Walking up to the B!G table and demanding that we “tell [you] about our club” will is not a good tactic to win us over with your confidence and drive. It will be met with a cocked eyebrow from me and a suggestion that you go apply to another student organization that can deal with your sickening ego.

3. Experience should not be confused with skills

We really liked a lot of the people who came and talked to us who had no substantial work experience but effectively demonstrated that they had the relevant team and analysis skills necessary for a position in B!G. Similarly, plenty of students gave windy pitches and droned on about irrelevant experience without really showcasing their unique skills. Let’s make no mistake here: in B!G, we want your skills. Your experience matters, but it’s not the only attribute you can sell yourself on.

4. The other clubs have no clue how to market themselves

Awful logos, awful sales pitches, awful collateral being handed out. To you student organizations which are feeling ‘not so fresh’ or perhaps are not effectively leveraging your unique value proposition, we’d like to talk to you!

5. Schulich has some seriously clever students

It’s obvious to me now that Schulich is an undergrad school with a stronger focus on the BBA students than the MBAs. The undergrad students here are unlike any other breed I’ve seen before and they’re hard to describe objectively without inferring value-laden descriptions. The BBAs are smart and very knowledgeable, but lacking in important work-with, team skills. There is a strong culture of ‘me first’ and I cannot easily remember an example a BBA has provided to me about when they motivated others and put other people’s best interests first. They can vociferously defend an idea and integrate all their classroom theory, but they fall down on important social skills, especially when they join the workforce and realize that not everyone is as smart or fast as them.

Remember in grade three when the teacher brought in chicken’s eggs and, as a class, we incubated them under a high-intensity lightbulb and in a nest of newspaper shredding? Those eggs hatched and all the students got to see the chicks grow and become fluffy, chirping, adorable poop machines.

That’s how I imagine the experience is at Schulich for BBAs. It’s an incubator for their ideas, preparing them for their careers but not providing a lot of social context to mute or soften their uncooperative Gen Y attitude.

Matt Taibbi's Lies of Sarah Palin

...as a continuation to my other post today.

The October 2nd issue of Rolling Stone has an article by Matt Taibbi, 'The Lies of Sarah Palin' which is an excellent commentary on what this election represents and has de-evolved to. I ordinarily don't copy content because it's bad for SEO, but this is a special exception. It's copied below:

The Lies of Sarah Palin
By Matt Taibbi

I’m standing outside the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota. Sarah Palin has just finished her speech to the Republican National Convention, accepting the party’s nomination for Vice President. If I hadn’t quit my two pack a day habit earlier this year, I’d be chain smoking right now. So the only thing left is to stand mute against the fit-for-a-cheap-dog-kennel crowd-control fencing you see everywhere at these idiotic conventions and gnaw on weird new feelings of shock and anarchist rage as one would a rawhide chew toy.



All around me, a million cops in there absurd post-9/11 space combat get-ups stand guard as assholes in paper-mache puppet heads scramble around for one last moment of network face time before the coverage goes dark. Four-chinned delegates from places like Arkansas and Georgia are pouring joylessly out the gates in search of bars where they can load up on Zombies and Scorpion bowls and other “wild” drinks and extramaritally grope their turkey-necked female companions in bathroom stalls as part of the “Unbelievable Time” they will inevitably report to their pals back home. Only 21st-century Americans can pass through a metal detector six times in an hour and still think they’re at a party.

The defining moment for me came shortly after Palin and her family stepped down from the stage to uproarious applause, looking happy enough to throw a whole library full of books into the sewer. In the crush to exit the stadium, a middle-aged woman wearing a cowboy hat, a red-white-and-blue shirt and an obvious eye job gushed to a male colleague – They were both wearing badges identifying them as members of the Colorado delegation – At the Xcel gates.

“She totally reminds me of my cousin!” the delegate screeched. “She’s a real woman! The real thing!”

I stared at her open-mouthed. In that moment, the rank cynicism of the whole sorry deal was laid bare. Here’s the thing about Americans. You can send their kids off by the thousands to get their balls blown off in foreign lands for no reason at all, saddle them with billions in debt year after congressional year while they spend their winters cheerfully watching game shows and football, pull the rug out from under their mortgages, and leave them living off their credit cards and their Wal-Mart salaries while you move their jobs to China and Bangalore.

And none of it matters, so long as you remember a few months before Election Day to offer them a two-bit caricature culled from some cutting-room-floor episode of Roseanne as part of your presidential ticket. And if she’s good enough likeness of a loudmouthed Middle American archetype, as Sarah Palin is, John Q. Public will drop his giant sized bag of Doritos in gratitude, wipe the sizzlin’ picante dust from his lips and rush to the booth to vote for her. Not because it makes sense, or because it has a chance of improving his life or anyone else’s, but simply because it appeals to the low-humming narcissism that substitutes for his personality, because that image on TV reminds him of the mean brainless slob he sees in the mirror every morning.

Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she’s a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power. Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she’s the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV – And this country is going to eat her up, cheering every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.

The Palin speech was a political masterpiece, one of the most ingenious pieces of electoral theater this country has ever seen. Never before has a single televised image turned a party’s fortunes around faster

Until the Alaska governor actually ascended to the podium that night, I was convinced that John McCain had made one of the all-time campaign-season blunders, that he had acted impulsively and out of utter desperation in choosing a cross-eyed political neophyte just two years removed from running a town smaller than the bleacher section at Fenway park. It even crossed my mind that there was an element of weirdly self-destructive pique in McCain’s decision to cave in to his party’s right-wing base in this fashion, that perhaps he was responding to being ordered by party elders away from tepid, ideologically promiscuous hack like Joe Lieberman – Reportedly his real preference – By picking the most obviously unqualified, doomed-to-fail joke of a Bible-Thumping buffoon. As in: You want me to rally the base? Fine, I’ll rally the base. Here I’ll choose this rifle-toting, serially pregnant moose killer who thinks God lobbies for oil pipelines. Happy now?

But watching Palin’s speech I had no doubt that I was witnessing a historic, iconic performance. The candidate sauntered to the lectern with the assurance of a sleepwalker – And immediately launched into a symphony of snorting and sneering remarks, taking time out in between the superior invective to present herself as just a humble gal with a beefcake husband and a brood of healthy, combat-ready spawn who just happened to be innocent targets of a communist and probably also homosexual media conspiracy. She appeared to be completely without shame and utterly full of shit, awing a room full of hardened reporters with her sickly sweet line about the high-school-flame-turned-hubby who “Five children later” is “Still my guy.” It was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag.

Within minutes, Palin had given TV audiences a character infinitely recognizable to virtually every American; the small-town girl with just enough looks and a defiantly incurious mind who thinks the PTA minutes are Holy Writ, and to whom injustice means the woman next door owning a slightly nicer set or drapes or flatware. Or the governorship, as it were.

Right-wingers of the Bush-Rove ilk have had a tough time finding a human face to put on their failed, inhuman, mean-as-hell policies. But it was hard not to recognize the genius of wedding that faltering brand of institutionalized greed to the image of the suburban American supermom. It’s the perfect cover, for there is almost nothing in the world meaner than this species of provincial tyrant.

Palin herself burned this political symbiosis into the pages of history with her seminal crack about the “Difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull: lipstick,” blurring once and for all the lines between meanness on the grand political scale as understood by the Roves and Bushes of the world, and meanness of the small-town variety as understood by pretty much anyone who has ever sat around in his ranch-house den dreaming of a fourth plasma-screen TV or an extra set of KC HiLites for his truck, while some ghetto family a few miles away shares a husk of government cheese.

In her speech, Palin presented herself as a raging baby-making furnace of middle-class ambition next to whom the yuppies of the Obama set – Who never want anything all that badly except maybe a few afternoons with someone else’s wife, or a few kind words in The New York Times Book Review – Seem like weak, self-doubting celibates, the kind of people who certainly cannot be trusted to believe in the right God or to defend a nation. We’re used to seeing such blatant cultural caricaturing in our politicians. But Sarah Palin is something new. She’s all caricature. As the candidate of a party whose positions on individual issues are poll losers almost across the board, her shtick is not even designed to sell a line of policies. It’s just designed to sell her. The thing was as much as admitted in the on-air gaffe by former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, who was inadvertently caught saying on MSNBC that Palin wasn’t the most qualified candidate, that the party “went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives.”

The great insight of the Palin VP choice is that huge chunks of American voters no longer even demand that their candidates actually have policy positions; they simply consume them as media entertainment, rooting for or against them according to the reflective prejudices of their demographic, as they would for a reality-show contestants or sitcom characters. Hicks root for hicks, moms for moms, born-agains for born-agains. Sure, there was politics in the Palin speech but it was all either silly lies or merely incidental fluffery buttressing the theatrical performance. A classic example of what was at work here came when Palin proudly introduced her Down-Syndrome baby, Trig, then stared into the camera and somberly promised parents of special-needs kids that they would “Have a friend and advocate in the White House.” This was about a half-hour before she raised her hands in triumph with McCain, a man who voted against increasing funding for special-needs education.

Palin’s charge that “government is too big” and that Obama “Wants to grow it” was similarly preposterous. Not only did her party just preside over the largest government expansion since LBJ, but Palin herself has been a typical bush-era republican, borrowing and spending beyond her means. Her great legacy as mayor of Wasilla was the construction of a $15 million hockey arena in a city with an annual budget of $20 million; Palin OK’d a bond issue for the project before the land had been secured, leading to a protracted legal mess that ultimately forced taxpayers to pay more than six times the original market price for property the city ended up having to seize from a private citizen using eminent domain. Better yet, Palin ended up paying for the fucking thing with a 25 percent increase in the city sales tax. But in her speech, of course, Palin presented herself as the enemy of tax increases, righteously bemoaning that “Taxes are too high” and Obama “Wants to raise them.”

Palin hasn’t been too worried about federal taxes as governor of a state that ranks number one in the nation in federal spending per resident ($13,950), even as it sits just 18th in federal taxes paid per resident ($5,434). That means all us taxpaying non-Alaskans spend $8,500 a year on each and every resident of Palin’s paradise of rugged self-sufficiency. Not that this sworn enemy of taxes doesn’t collect from her own; Alaska currently collects the most taxes per resident of any state in the nation. The rest of Palin’s speech was the same dog-whistle crap Republicans have been railing about for decades. Palin’s crack about a mayor being “like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities” testified to the Republican’s apparent belief that they can win elections till the end of time running against the Sixties. (They’re probably right.) The incessant pausing about the media was likewise par for the course, red meat for those tens of millions of patriotic flag-waving Americans whose first instinct when things get rough is to whine like bitches and blame other people – Reporters, the French, those ungrateful blacks soaking up tax money eating big prison meals, whomever – For their failures.

Add to this the usual lies about Democrats wanting to “forfeit” to our enemies abroad and coddle terrorists, and you had a run-of-the-mill, almost boring Republican speech from a substance standpoint. What made it exceptional was its utter hypocrisy, its total disregard for reality, it’s total disregard for reality, it’s absolute unrelation to the facts of our current political situation. After eight years of unprecedented corruption, incompetence, waste and greed, the party of Karl Rove understood that 50 million Americans would not demand solutions to any of these problems so long as they were given a new, new thing to beat their meat over.

Sarah Palin is that new, new thing, and in the end it won’t matter that she’s got an unmarried teenage kid with a bun in the oven. Of course, if the daughter of a black candidate like Barack Obama showed up at his convention with a five month bump and some sideways-cap-wearing, junior-grade Curtis Jackson (50 cent) holding her hand, the defenders of Traditional Morality would be up in arms. But the thing about being in the reality-making business is that you don’t need to worry much about vetting; there are no facts in your candidate’s bio that cannot be ignored or overcome.

One of the most amusing things about the Palin nomination has been the reaction of horrified progressives. The internet has been buzzing at full volume as would-be defenders of sanity and reason pore over the governor’s record in search of the Damning Facts. My own telephone began ringing off the hook with calls from ex-Alaskans and friends of Alaskans determined to help get the “truth” about Sarah Palin into the major media. Pretty much anyone with an internet connection knows by know that Palin was originally for the “Bridge to Nowhere” before she opposed it (She actually endorsed the plan in her 2006 gubernatorial campaign), that even after the project was defeated she kept the money, that she didn’t actually sell the Alaska governor’s state luxury jet on eBay but instead sold it at a $600,000 loss to a campaign contributor (who is reportedly now seeking $50,000 in taxpayer money to pay maintenance costs).

Then there are the salacious tales of Palin’s swinging-meat-cleaver management style, many of which seem to have a common thread: In addition to being ensconced in a messy ethics investigation over her firing of the chief of Alaska state troopers (dismissed after refusing to sack her sister’s ex-husband), Palin also fired a campaign aide who had an affair with a friends wife. More ominously, as mayor of Wasilla, Palin tried to fire the town librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, who had resisted pressure to censor books Palin found objectionable.

Then there’s the God stuff: Palin belongs to a church whose pastor, Ed Kalnins, believes that all criticisms of George Bush “Come from Hell” and wondered aloud if people who voted for John Kerry could be saved. Kalnins, looming as the answer to Obama’s Jeremiah Wright, claims that Alaska is going to be a “refuge state” for Christians in the last days, last days which he sometimes speaks of in the present tense. Palin herself has been captured on video mouthing the inevitable born again idiocies, such as the idea that a recent oil-pipeline deal was “God’s Will.” She also described the Iraq War as a “task that is from God” and part of a heavenly “Plan.” She supports teaching creationism and “Abstinence only” in public schools, opposes abortion even for victims of rape, has denied the science behind global warming and attends a church that seeks to convert Jews and cure homosexuals.

All of which tells you about what you’d expect from a raise-the-base choice like Palin: She’s a puffed-up dimwit with primitive religious beliefs who had to be educated as to the fact that the constitution did not exactly envision government executives firing librarians. Judging from the importance progressive critics seem to attach to these revelations, you’d think that these were actually negatives in modern American politics. But Americans like politicians who hate books and see the face of Jesus in every tree stump. They like them stupid and mean and ignorant of the rules. Which is why Palin has only seemed to grow in popularity as more and more of these revelations have come out.

The same goes for the most damning aspect of her biography, her total lack of big-game experience. As governor of Alaska, Palin presides over a state whose entire population is barely the size of Memphis. This kind of thing might matter in a country that actually worried about whether its leader was prepared for his job – But not in America. In America, it takes about 2 weeks in the limelight for the whole country to think you’ve been around for years. To a certain extent, this is why Obama is getting a pass on the same issue. He’s been on TV every day for two years and according to the standards of our instant-ramen culture, that’s a lifetime of hands-on experience.

It is worth noting that the same criticisms of Palin also hold true for two other candidates in this race, John McCain and Barack Obama. As politicians, both men are more narrative than substance, with McCain rising to prominence on the back of his bio as a suffering war hero and Obama mostly playing the part of long-lost, future-embracing liberal dreamboat not seen on the national stage since Bobby Kennedy died. If your stomach turns to read how Palin’s Kawasaki 704 glasses are flying off the shelves in Middle America, you have to accept that Middle America probably feels the same way when it hears Donatella Versace dedicated her collection to Obama during Milan Fashion Week. Or sees the throwing-panties-onstage-“I love you, Obama!” ritual at the Democratic nominee’s town-hall appearances.

So, sure, Barack Obama might be every bit as much as a slick piece of imageering as Sarah Palin. The difference is in what the image represents. The Obama image represents tolerance, intelligence, education, patience with the notion of compromise and negotiation, and a willingness to stare ugly facts right in the face, all qualities we’re actually going to need in government if we’re going to get out of this huge mess we’re in.

Here’s what Sarah Palin represents: being a fat fucking pig who pins “Country First” buttons on his man titties and chants “U-S-A! U-S-A!” at the top of his lungs while his kids live off credit cards and Saudis buy up all the mortgages in Kansas

The truly disgusting thing about Sarah Palin isn’t that she’s totally unqualified, or a religious zealot, or married to a secessionist, or unable to educate her own daughter about sex, or a fake conservative who raised taxes and porked up earmark millions every chance she got. No, the most disgusting thing about her is what she says about us: That you can ram us in the ass for eight solid years, and we’ll not only thank you for your trouble, we’ll sign you up for eight more years, if only you promise to stroke us in the right spot for few hours around election time.

Democracy doesn’t require a whole lot of work of its citizens, but it requires some: It requires taking a good look outside once in awhile, and considering the bad news and what it might mean, and making the occasional tough choice, and soberly taking stock of what your real interests are.

This is a very different thing from shopping, which involves passively letting sitcoms melt your brain all day long and then jumping straight into the TV screen to buy a southern Style Chicken Sandwich because the slob singing “I’m Lovin’ It!” during the commercial break looks just like you. The joy of being a consumer is that it doesn’t require thought, responsibility, self-awareness or shame: All you have to do is obey the first urge that gurgles up from your stomach. And then obey the next. And the next. And the next.

And when it comes time to vote all you have to do is put your Country First – Just like that lady on TV who reminds you of your cousin. U-S-A, Baby. U-S-A! U-S-A!

Max to the Media: Grow a pair already

This is a marketing/advertising/cultural blog, not a political one. Opinions fly fast and furious here but it’s usually constrained to bashing Rogers Wireless, hating on Microsoft, or extolling our own organizational virtues.

However, there’s something irking me about the US Presidential campaign and passivity of the media to issues that actually matter.

On the economy

The financial market muckup is making me nervous for my career prospects when I graduate. It’s hardly like I’ll be going into investment banking, but the instability poses a massive risk for the confidence of investors to undertake perceived non-revenue generating expenditures – ad and marketing campaigns! With such a dazzling presidential campaign filled with such charismatic people, we’ve all become a little myopic to this economic disaster. Greater focus must be given to this situation and all candidates in the presidential campaign must be questioned about what specifically they would do to strengthen investor confidence, enforce regulation and standards where appropriate, and raise the productivity of the US economy. Low-skilled jobs have gone to China. They are not coming back. But that doesn’t mean that America has no basis for international economic competition.

The US spends more than it earns. Despite the $3 trillion foreign debt carried by the US government in the form of treasury bills sold to foreign banks – international investors still have confidence in the ability of the US economy to chug along and continue consuming. In a bizarre twist of economics, it’s become a self-sustaining debt cycle supported by twin fiscal and trade deficits. If China cashed in their t-bills tomorrow, they’d be as hurt as the US by the complete collapse of the economy. No one is ready for that.

So it’s a Sword of Damacles that neither McCain nor Obama have really been able to address. Palin certainly doesn’t have the answer. I haven’t seen a strong acknowledgement of the severity of this problem from either side. Most worrying however, is that no one is pressed by the media to solve it.

What about the recently announced $700 billion infusion of cash to take the risk from unsecured mortgages – essentially a loan from American taxpayers. How will the next president ensure that this is repaid by the major banks and that accountabilities are set? Bush has actually bankrupted the country – what do the candidates feel about this?

Through the cunning entanglement of bundles of financial securities by risky investors who were poorly monitored, investment banks are now unable to separate good loans from bad loans. Does Obama have a plan to fix this? What is McCain’s strategy for regaining investor confidence in the financial system?

On their backgrounds

Here’s another bother: why are we no longer seeing Maverick McCain? He was a rabble-rouser in Washington with a reputation for action and doing the right thing. Why has he lost this? Why isn’t he being asked to explain why he lost this?

Why is Obama not being asked to explain why he chose Joe Biden over Hilary Clinton if McCain picked Palin as an apparent come hither pander to female voters? What does he really think of John McCain and Sarah Palin?

What does he think of the fact that many Americans will likely not vote for him because he’s black, despite what they tell pollsters.

But what offends me most – no surprise here – is the kid glove treatment Sarah Palin is receiving by the media…except for Barbara Walters and Joy Behar. Watch:



…yes, exactly WHAT reform is Palin known for?? And thank God for Matt Damon…



Why hasn’t anyone in the media asked her more of these questions? Sarah Palin IS absurd. Matt’s right, she IS terrifying. If she’s going to be in a senior position of government, I want to her to answer for her hypocrisy of promoting abstinence in sex-ed while her daughter gets pregnant right under her nose. This is not unreasonable to ask. I want her to answer for why she thinks that after having governed a town of only 8,000 people with no sizable economy to speak of, she’s now capable of crafting economic policy that will impact the world.

What’s terrifying is that whenever she is asked tough questions like this, the McCain camp puts their defensive blinders up and attacks the media for being too unilateral. They thought Tina Fey's portrayal of Palin on SNL was sexist. Let the journalists do their job. Let's comedians do theirs. It just goes to show how little substance she has that the McCain campaign is unwilling to let her answer their questions.

News media is being far too soft on everyone in this campaign.

They’re complicit when Republicans mewl and whine when questions stray too far away from lipstick and too close to energy policy and creationism, and they’re complicit when Democrats make utopian claims for the future while offering no substantive facts about how they’ll implement it.

I'm astounded by how political figures attempt to point the finger of blame at the media for asking too many sensitive questions and how tacitly the media accepted this as a natural part of journalism! Start demanding that politicians answer difficult questions.

This really is the scariest election ever because no one seems to be taking it seriously.

The weekend links

Sickness has descended upon me, engulfing my head in a throbbing sinus-y fugue. Here are the links for this weekend:

Why God, why??! Sao Paulo, a city without any out-of-home advertising. See the photoblog here.



HAHAHA - the funniest link in the list. Things I learned from Stock photos - the AD team is gonna love this! My favourite, "That one-handed, one-knee laptop bullshit is the preferred way to get real work done" - brilliant!


We explored the Chinese contemporary artist Lui Wei last week. Here is another avart-garde guy, Liu Bolin. I'm not sure how the censors feel about this, but to me his work speaks volumes about Chinese government policy and how with the many issues we hear about in China, everyday citizens can become invisible to outsider observers and even party leaders.


Every week I look for something bizarre. Here are macabre snowglobes. I want the one with the monster spider - it reminds me of a fun Christmas years back!



Our very own Sid Wahi, IT Director and Group Account Director has contributed his insights to the Insider about the recent financial market instability.


Hot off the presses, Interbrand's ranking of the Top 100 Global Brands.

1. Coke
2. IBM
3. Microsoft
4. GE
5. Nokia
6. Toyota
7. Intel
8. McDonald's
9. Disney
10. Google

B!G has risen from #87 on this list in 2007 to #11, right behind Google.

Hertzog and de Meuron, the architects of Beijing's Bird's Nest, unveiled plans this week for a new 57-storey condo tower in Tribeca, NYC. Gorgeous.


Uhh...BARF. Microsoft apparently always intended to pull the Gates-Seinfeld ads after only a week. Now we get to ensure Phase Two of the grand plan in which Microsoft uses such influential people as Eva Longoria (...why?) to promote the fact that Microsoft connects us and that we are all PCs.



I don't identify with anyone in that ad, and although I use a PC and I do not use a Mac, I AM NOT A PC. It's ridiculous that a company which has fostered so much negative press regarding its inhuman and unintuitive approach to usability would deign to assume that the public is happy to identify themselves with the product.

Missed. The. Mark. Grade: F

It's one of the last explored places in the Western Hemisphere, filled with dangerous guerrillas and drug-runners, impenetrable forests, and poison-filled sharp things. So why do I want to go visit the Darien Gap in Panama?


And finally, the third episode of my new favourite show, True Blood, is on tonight. It's about vampires, enough said. Oh, and the opening sequence is pretty awesome.



Have a great, health-filled week everyone!

You know you're a BBA student when...

I've been back in classes for three weeks now and am starting to realize that four years is a long time to spend in business school (MBAs, just imagine doubling the length of your degree). Here's some of the signs that show you've been learning about Porter's Diamond Model for far too long.

1) Your carefully chosen back-to-school outfit is...your black suit.
Perhaps a Don Cherry-esque suit at your next infosession would help you stand out:


2) Everything you say is an acronym.
WACC, GAAP, DCF, IS, LM, GDP, CPI, LCM, LIFO, FIFO, CAPM...I could go on.

3) There are at least five cups of coffee in your classroom. 45 cups if it's an accounting or finance-related class.
They're probably fair-trade certified and overpriced as well.


4) You don't make friends. You "network."
And you've made an art form of how you hand over your business card.



5) You laugh at jokes like "Yo, that balance sheet is WACC."
Admit it, you've even made that joke.

6) You've waited 20 minutes in line at the coffee stand during your 15 minute break pondering what bottlenecks are creating inefficiencies.
Maybe that operations class is kind of handy...



7) You see your group members more than your own family.
And they're all on your My5.8) "It depends," is your favourite answer.
Followed by five minutes of double speak to make sure you get all of your participation marks.

9) You see a bunch of zombies in your classroom and figure that it must be accounting recruiting season again.
This would be a good time of year to invest in some Red Bull stock.

10) You know what time the Schulich building closes.
And you know this because you've been kicked out at 2am so many times.

If you could respond "yes, that's me" to more than 7 of these questions, congratulations, you've gotten your $20,000 worth. Good luck with the rest of the school year!

Trim your fiffi! Quirky online creativity

This is a wonderful creative online campaign from Sweden. Some campaigns are pretty hilarious and you just kinda have to step back and think how ridiculous they are. Is the message really that offensive? It's not sexist or misogynist, just silly and absurd!


Here is what Creativity says about this online campaign:

Aimed at women post-puberty and beyond, the site invites visitors to virtually style and customize what the Scandinavians call your "fiffi" with scissors, a razor or an array of RFSU products. The fictional character Miss Fiffi, who's an 80-year-old midwife, will then judge your shaving skills on a scale of 1 to 10 and your completed fiffi can subsequently be downloaded and embedded in your Facebook page.

Complemented by banner ads and an outdoor campaign, the somewhat controversial site also hosts a contest where the best fiffi wins a full shaving kit courtesy of RFSU. If one requires a more personal touch, they can contact a real-life midwife from the RFSU clinic for grooming tips via MSN Messenger.

HAHAHAHA!

How postmodern!

What makes this a clever campaign, IMO?

1. It's lighthearted and the right tone for the client, which apparently is a non-profit Swedish sex education organization.
2. Almost like the Rocky Horror Picture Show, it's interactive and encourages audience participation!
3. All those online platforms are being built into the architecture for the campaign. This permits various forms of engagement and response.
4. In an indirect way, I believe that this sort of message encourages greater ownership of one's body and promotes self-empowerment, especially for women. Sure, it's a quirky way to achieve that objective, but we're all adults, right?

Test your trimming skills here at RFSU's Fiffi microsite.

What's the deal with Microsoft's new ads?!?

As part of a new $300 million (yes, $300 million) ad campaign to reposition itself as a friendly, approachable, and human brand, Microsoft has launched these new commercials, mini-movies really, featuring the original odd couple, Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. Seinfeld earned $10 million for his zany performance.

Here's 'Shoe Circus':



Here's 'New Family':



What's the point of this ad? I'm really confused and scared right now. It's not a feeling I like! So, why are they trying on shoes? Is it supposed to be cute and irreverent?

Does anyone think that Jerry Seinfeld is relevant anymore? Is Bill gates really a charismatic and influential individual to Gen Y? Is he really even that influential to normal consumers, who, if they're of a certain age are doing everything they can to infantilize themselves anyway and would rather buy a new Apple than a new PC.

It's just a baffling commercial because Microsoft and their agency Crispin Bogusky & Porter believes that the simple new message of Microsoft "Delicious" or "Connectivity" is best communicated by obnoxious loud mouths. Simple messages don't need such a carnival-like atmosphere to be understood. In fact by giving this campaign such a massive context mutes and muddies that simple message. The fact that the commercials are 1:30 and 4:30 long and that there is not an immediate hook to clue the audience in to the whole value prop is confusing.

Nonetheless, we're talking about it and the ads have gone viral. He's what others have said:

The Good:
Seattle Post-Intelligencier

The Bad:
Wired
Engadget
MSNBC

The Ugly:
Scoble
Fast Company

They've gone viral, but as MSNBC analyzes, the virality is negative and reinforces the perceptual challenges that Microsoft has faced in the last five years.

...because the perception, now as before, is that Microsoft just doesn't get it.

Kraft's innovative online push for Peek Freans

Marketing Mag wrote about a great new campaign today, the launch of new Peek Freans cookies by Kraft. It’s the way the campaign was executed that excites me and makes me think that this was a good innovative push. I’ve never heard of a web-based soap opera to introduce new cookie varieties! From prowling around in the campaign's Facebook page, I think it was co-created by the digital arm of MacLaren-McCann here in Toronto (nothing is safe!!!)



The message is funny and the brand isn’t taking itself too seriously. Kraft is great at branding and the modernization of Peek Freans, a 150 year old bakery with a 50 year legacy in Canada, is pretty impressive. The campaign focus is clearly women, 30-45, who are not necessarily tech-savvy but have received a viral video message from friends before. The seven-part series encourages repeat visits and there is a strong call to action to register your email on the site so that you can be notified of the next video launch (I assume weekly?). Good for CRM purposes too since this is a form of opt-in customer acquisition.

They’ve built a microsite to highlight the video campaign and I assume, the eventual release of the new cookies, Brown Sugar Blueberry with Flax and Lime Coconut with Probiotic. A few things that are missing – more information about the product please! And perhaps some coupons that I can take to the grocery store on my next visit to entice me to buy the new product…

The article talks about this campaign’s reach through other online platforms including Flickr and Facebook to add context to the more costly direct mail and in-store sampling that will be done. I hope I see more of this campaign to get the fuller picture.

Good job, Kraft and MacLaren-McCann!

The weekend links

I love doing the weekend links. It's one of the highlights of my week. All week long during normal surfing, Stumbling, and IMing, various fun links come up which I copy down and save for this very moment.

So in the spirit of this weekend's visual approach to blogging, I'll try to keep the words down on this post. You'll see it's very video/audio/image focused!

An amazing cover of The Pixies 'Where is my mind' by Placebo:





This and other amazing pictures from the Summer 2008 Paralympic Games in Beijing.



Li Wei is a contemporary Chinese photographer. His pictures defy gravity.

Beautiful commercial for Sony Bravia. Song is Jose Gonzales 'Heartbeats'.




Bizarre poses and bad posture at LOOKBOOK. The kids look really cool though.

Fantastic 'what-if' architecture courtesy of Dezeen Magazine.

One of my favourite commercials. Great hook, memorable, and strongly product focused. Awesome work.





The evolution of brand logos. I think Nokia should return to that old logo with the zombie chinook salmon concept...avant garde!

And finally for those who missed it, a brilliant skewering of Sarah Palin last night on SNL by Tina Fey.

Brands I like: a phlog

Phlog = photo-blog. Pictures speak louder than words. I was feeling illustrative this afternoon.

Fresh insights from Max's brain

Some days I get reflective about my own consumer behavior. Deep from my cortex, here are some certified 'Max Billings Thoughts on Marketing'.

Thought #1:

In one of my recent classes we were asked to consider our mental schemas in relation to a certain brand and form associations between that brand and certain concepts, things, or people. The great thing about free-market capitalism is that social values or individual perceptions have no bearing in the decision making process unless those values have a direct influence on profit. So if I believe that Starbucks is a brand known for environmental stewardship, terrible service, and high comfort in-store, who’s to say that I’m wrong? If I’ve forged those associations in my head, I own that unique mental schema and it’s the responsibility of Starbucks to make sure that it meets my expectations.

Thought #2:

Another strange thing occurred to me, spurred by a comment in class. By its nature, marketing excludes people. It’s about understanding who has the greatest likelihood of responding and opting-in to a certain message and then appealing to that fractioned audience with a communication that resonates. If the marketer is lucky, then the communication will be well-received and a mutual dialogue is created. So then a whole bunch of people are excluded because marketers have deemed them tot not be valuable for the strategic objectives. If the client’s business is stagnating and it’s obvious that younger customers need to be attracted, then does it make sense to craft a marcom campaign that appeals to old men? Targeted marketing ignores people. It’s not about being fair or politically-correct. There are some people (suspects, not prospects) who were never meant to receive the message because they’re not a valuable potential audience to the brand.

Thought #3:

Consumers in general have a very poor understanding of their purchasing patterns and susceptibility to marketing messages. Germane to this is a limited awareness of how incredibly personalized and relevant most forms of marketing are made for them. It’s mass-media that gets a lot of the attention because it’s superficial and so painfully shilling unwanted/unnecessary product, but what about the targeted ads you receive online? What about the DM inserts that come into magazines you subscribe to? Plenty of campaigns happen that we don’t even realize. Don Draper, my fictitious hero from Mad Men, said that effective advertising is that which we’re not even aware of but still does its job.

Thought #4:

I’m scared by how willingly my peers in class accept that a viable strategy to marketing communications is to shout louder at consumers. Consumers are willing to listen but only to brands which speak to them with words that are relevant. Consumers tune out and become disaffected and unresponsive with marketing strategies meant on drilling some message deep into your brain. Enough already with the Rogers Wireless commercials with the texting teenagers – it misses the mark! Marketers must never make the mistake that the objective of doing marketing is “to be heard”. Rather, the objective of doing marketing must always be “to be relevant”. Increasingly it’s experiences that supersede messages as the primary mechanism to drive relevance to consumer.

Thought #5:

This is unrelated to marketing, but it just popped into my brain. Be the change you want to see in others. Leadership by example is a great strategy and one I’m trying in all aspects of the agency here. It’s challenging, but rewarding when you see substantive positive growth in employees.

Thought #6:

If I’m serious about being an agency head, then I’ve got to continue to do everything I can to cut my teeth on creative development, brand building, and copy-writing. These are the central facets of agency operations. If I can’t excel at these functions, than what use am I in a marketing capacity…?

Since returning to school, I feel like I’ve been paved into the ground with a bulldozer piling work on me. Thank God for four-day weekends.

Zig and bumvertising: Bad ad rodeo

It's been a while since I've written another Bad Ad Rodeo, an analysis of awful ads that fail to inspire - but this one is juicy!

It’s called bumvertising, an offensive and ridiculous new invention by marketers (Zig Interactive here in Toronto) as a way to be tongue-in-cheek and promote a client’s socially critical message using socially distasteful means. Homeless people in Toronto have been paid $250 per day to sit with signs for CFRB talk radio and act as human billboards. We’ll talk about whether this is good marketing or not later, but it’s so transparently lacking in basic values that I’m inclined to say no matter how effective a campaign this was, it has really done our business and the client a disservice because of the general tone and reception of the campaign.

Click the image to read larger.

There really wasn’t a better way to get the message across while still keeping your chins up? Are the CDs at Zig actually proud of the social discourse that they’ve catalyzed in Toronto about the homeless? How about whether they’re proud to call themselves marketers? I can certainly appreciate why observers might now have a bitter taste about our profession when this schlock can now act as a focal point for all the negative perceptions people have about ad men.

‘They are immoral’
‘They sell me things I don’t need’
‘They don’t care where the message is as long as someone sees it’

Bumvertising and Zig Interactive have done nothing to advance the state of marketing in Canada. There’s no differentiation or evolution of ideas from good to great. This isn’t great marketing…it’s just a sleazy shill for a client.

…and that’s another thing. If this was a campaign actioned at the client’s request, didn’t someone at Zig have enough of a spine to take a stand and express their dissatisfaction with how the agency might be selling its soul for CFRB?

But I guess the campaign might have actually been effective. Think about it. High-traffic locations, unique context, appropriate message, “should panhandling be illegal?” It’s hit the checklist of effective out-of-home campaigns, and it seems to have created a good buzz. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who does not have an opinion on this campaign or doesn’t show some sort of emotion when learning about it. It was likely also cost effective – I’m guessing $30K, including creative development and street execution?

But is that what the homeless are now in our downtown streets? Marketing campaign executioners?

I’m really disappointed in Zig and CFRB. Someone should have had the common sense to stand up amidst the back-slapping, hand-shaking, and self-congratulatory praise for developing such an “innovative, thought-provoking, and socially stimulating campaign” to say that while it may have been all of those things, it falls down on basic marketing morals and human decency.

Grade: F

Audrina from The Hills explains brand brainstorming

Brandstorming. It’s a cool word, an even cooler practice. You sit in a room and start concentrating about a creative idea. You try to push it to the limits of possibility and identify unique associations with that idea. Brandstorming is critical to campaign development and implies understanding not only what audience you’re selling to, but what messages the will find relevant. It’s really putting yourself in their shoes to better appreciate the idiosyncrasies of their purchasing behaviors and their individual motivations.

As a brand representative of The Hills, Audrina Partridge has been kind enough to offer her own suggestions for how to undergo a really intense brandstorming session.

Audrina: Well, Max, I’m not quite sure what you want me to say here...


Max: Just talk about how you and the producers of The Hills brainstorm about developing you into a commodity…


Audrina: Ok, that works!


Audrina: The first thing to good brandstorming is to provide yourself with the tools for creative expression. You want to make sure that when those ideas come bubbling up from your lecherous and innovative subconscious, that they can achieve full expression without being edited by language, preconceptions, or prior reference. Helpful tip: get yourself a scrapbook and some coloured pencils. Use these to get your ideas out in the least constrained way possible.

Max: And what if I like to work on a laptop?

Audrina: Ok well laptops are great for collaborating and working quickly on big projects, so just make sure that you’re well supported in your original idea before taking it to digital. I’d recommend starting on paper. The best ideas come straight from palm to pulp, it’s more organic that way!

Max: Any other tips?

Audrina: so definitely get involved with other people keen on helping you develop the brand. It’d suck to perform brandstorming alone or in isolation where you can’t bounce ideas off each other and generate a creative self-perpetuating energy that everyone can feed off of.

Max: I guess what you’re trying to say is that it’s like playing catch. You need someone pitching ideas and someone who can capture them.

Audrina: Exactly! It’s helpful when you bring a lot of energetic people to the table who each brings a different point of view The worst scenario is when you have a bunch of vanilla cakers and they just spill the same schlock out day after day.

Max: Like the SoCal WASP cast of The Hills?

Audrina: Exactly!

Max: Any final suggestions for making a brandstorming meeting successful?


Audrina: Just remember to not edit yourself when thinking about ideas. Talking out loud is one of the most helpful brandstorming practices that you can do. It precipitates a discussion and good idea generation among a team of like-minded people. It’s also a terrific way to hear what other people are thinking about, and sometimes they will say things which you haven’t even considered.

Max: thanks Audrina!

Remember, you can watch new episodes of The Hills on MTV, Sunday’s at 10.

The weekend links

Hi everyone,

So things are getting pretty heated up at school lately. B!G is in the middle of a massive recruiting drive (send us your resume and cover letter at big.membership@gmail.com if you're interested in an Associate position on Research and Analysis, Advertising and Design, Copywriting, or Public Relations teams), I'm starting classes on Tuesday, my car is in desperate need of a new tire, and I have a big hurdle next weekend for my MBA group project (the 601). I don't mean to rant but sometimes it's interesting and kinda voyeuristic to read about the secret life of a blogger and not have to analyze their life from what they write about and post.

BTW, for fans of Jewish deli food, my soul food, I highly recommend Pancer's deli on Bathurst north of Wilson. Try the corned beef, the best in the Toronto!


Alright, on with the links:

The advertising slogan generator isn't new, but it does help those long nights with trying to get a good idea in copy. I'll remember Don Draper's advice from Mad Men, "focus intensely on [what you're trying to say], then forget it and put it out of your mind. That's when the idea will come".

While we're on the topic, MarketingHackz did a good analysis of nailing killer ad copy. I especially like the points about simplification. If you think the ad can still be explained, try removing a few words - see if it can be explained then too.

Shout out to my Ad Team. Here's where we're stealing all our free stock images from. I love Web 2.0!

God, this is devastating news. Internet usage causes depression.

Am I the only techie who hasn't downloaded Chrome yet? The user reviews of Google's new browser pique my interest. Dana, how are you liking it?

HAHA this is hilarious. I know I'm in college when I nap and procrastinate way too much. I think the undergrads and those living in rez at York will like this list of 'You know you're in college when' items.

Another HAHAHA...this helpful webpage explains when it's time to get a new computer and which computers you should look into buying. I think I need the server rack for $75,000 because it's capable of handing IM, streaming video, AND uploading pictures from a USB.

Ever consider the impact of your colour choices in direct marketing? There's been a lot written about this anyway (and I think most colour theory is kinda bullshit...) but interesting nonetheless.

And finally, this video is sick. I want to do extreme ski gliding on my next vacation. I should probably bring Depends.

Extreme Ski Gliding


Have a great week everyone!