Purgatory

mfw...graduation

I've always felt strange in that time between school terms. Somewhere between the desire to relax after the storm and the imminent call of the future getting closer each day, there lies a special place in my life I like to call

HELL.

Ok, so it's not really hell. But the waiting=suffering, so close enough. The big breaks, like winter and summer, were the worst. But I'm finding now that the intensity of the feeling has little relation to the length.

Supposedly the biggest change in my life just happened. Yup, I'm graduated now *mini party*. But it's not the grand spectacle it was made out to be. It's more complicated than that, surreal in a way. I've been doing this college thing for six years (that's another story). My whole life up until now has been in school in fact. And now the class of 2012 and I are shifting gears into the so called real world. I have identified as a student my entire life, and now I am no longer one.         WOAH.

But then again, I've spent years preparing for this. I was "done" with that phase of the journey a while back. It's not like I'm without a plan either. Tomorrow I start working in the COLABORATORY internship, which is the greatest ongoing opportunity I could ask for to kick start my career. It's going to be awesome because I'm going to give awesome and work with awesome. Still, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT WILL HAPPEN. And that's an uneasy thing to swallow sometimes.

Combine that with heart wrenching farewells to close friends off to follow their own dreams; people I've grown to love like my own. Saying goodbye to my girlfriend, who's been there in trying and great times alike, is not easy. Not knowing if I'll see her again is harder.


So somewhere between being excited for it all, saying "so long" to pastimes, and not entirely knowing what to expect, here I am. In the waiting place.


I guess that's part of growing up though. Sometimes I won't have a clear goal to be reaching for, and that's okay. I believe the trick is to never stop looking for inspiration, and if I still can't discover it, make it for myself.


As usual, this feeling will end, and I will once again find myself immersed in something/everything and with a clear action plan to move forward on this second quarter of life. Let's see if I can make that happen tomorrow.

UO NYC 2012: The Short of It

Ten years New York has been on my mind. An urban jungle in its truest form, bringing together the brightest minds of the last two centuries, ever reaching higher physically and figuratively. Working my way on to the annual University of Oregon advertising trip to the big apple for Creative Week was a no-brainer.

For ten incredible days I was immersed in the melting pot of The City at the center of humanity. With sixty strategic minds from the University of Oregon I went exploring its nooks, picking the brains of its driven advertising professionals, and connecting with people that I had only looked up to from a distance before. Even for all my visions of grandeur, I expected to find a different picture than I was idolizing, as I usually find when I travel. No, New York lives up to everything I hoped for and more. There's nine million driven people there, each with their own story and lessons I want to learn.

Probably the most valuable insights I took away from the many agency tours revolved around how an account manager can best serve his/her team. I heard many perspectives, some of them contradictory and bitter. Though in the end, I feel it comes down to trust, respect, and remembering that as an account person, I am there to work with the team including the client, not for the team or client. Prove the partnership, and help the people around succeed doing what they do best. And always keep the brief brief.

It also became apparent that we at UO are coming from a very different background than much of the up-and-comers from around the country. I think the best way the program was described was "progressive." If the concept of everyone being capable of creativity and strategy in their own way is uncommon in advertising, then I'm excited to see where today's Ducks take the industry tomorrow. A million props go out to the staff and student leadership in the SOJC for saying no to the status quo and demanding tomorrow's advertisers rise to the next level.

It's more than a major city or an advertising hub. New York is life; raw human energy. New York is where potential can be fully realized if you have what it takes. There's no way I can't be there. Now, I'm finding myself asking a whole new set of questions that will define my career and my life. Some of the questions are very hard. Some of the answers are reshaping my plan in bold and uncomfortable ways. And I'm okay with that. You need to follow what calls to you, and Manhattan is calling to me. I've got my work cut out for me, but I couldn't be happier.

The Brand Is Not A Logo

I've known for some time that my career will be driven by connecting business and creative thinkers. This will be no simple task. If my experiences in the UO advertising and business school communities are any indication, perspectives of the "brand" and the purpose of advertising are very different depending on where you look at it. I'm extremely glad I'm able to witness the forming places of what will be future industry players' opinions on the subject. While I don't know if I will ever be a account-man-guru-phenom, I certainly can use my interactions with blooming client and agency minded people as preparation for the real deal.

In a recent presentation in a business school group I won't name, some colleagues of mine spoke about what is a brand. They suggested that a brand has a few requirements, including a logo, a tagline, and a color. This is a common (though not universal) thought in the marketing world. While it's not completely off base, I respectfully suggest that this opinion needs some guidance.

The general purpose of the brand is to allow value growth of a product line, company, etc. beyond the tangible factors of the product. It allows consumers to connect. People can't connect with products, but they can with brands because brands transcend physical limitations and adopt a persona. Brands function subconsciously as people in our minds and can be loved, detested, even worshiped. I can like a product for what it physically does, but when I like and trust what that product values, where it comes from, and what is does for me on an emotional level then I'm liking the brand encompassing it. Think of your product in a human physical form. That's your brand.

Some brands have what you could call "street cred"

I'm sorry, but a logo is not a brand, but it can tell you something about that brand. Same thing goes for a color. Tiffany's blue is not what the jeweler is, but it can tell me things about its luxury, simplicity, and tradition. You are not the clothes you wear, but the clothes you wear say something about you. Where you live gives clarity to your story just as where a product is made offers focus to the brand identity. These things are tools that contribute to brand identity, but ultimately that identity is up to the mind of the audience based on a whole slew of pieces.

Brand managers cannot control their brand in the eyes of consumers. However they can control many of the inputs that either positively or negatively influence the intended message. In marketing we refer to this as the 5 P's: product, price, placement, promotion, and people. When these line up they reinforce each other and a brand will be resilient to negative forces. When one or more factors are not consistent with the others they damage the value message of the brand and leave it vulnerable to attack.

A strong brand isn't always a beloved brand... but it helps

A common misinterpretation of the brand is that it has to do with the advertising/promotion portion of the marketing equation mostly or completely. A strong brand requires an integrated marketing approach. Without an integrated approach to the brand, the advertising is just promoting something the product is not (which really pisses customers off). To consumers a brand is not just a name, but a collection of experiences from every touch point in the product's story.

We can put a positive spin on a bad product. We can put a quality product in a cheap store. We can connect with socially conscious customers while using despicable production methods. We can even make a short-term increase in profits from these shortcuts. In the end however, it will come back to bite us. When consumers find that a brand is not what it claims to be they become hostile. When they find a brand that practices what it preaches and lines up with their values, they become customers and stay customers.

The lesson to take from all of this: when we are thinking about reinventing/creating a brand in the world, let's not fall into the trap of confusing marketing tools with their eventual effect. Let's think in terms of the brand and not just components that make it. Let's stand with conviction about our brands and support them, not just promote them. When we do this, our brands can act as influential and powerful figures in the lives of consumers, which stands better against competition, mistakes, and time. If we want profitable products, start with human brands.

Viral Shortsightedness

Joseph Kony is an asshole. Let's get that out of the way. That's not what I want to discuss here. Here's some other things I don't want to discuss:

• Improper use of funds by the non-profit, Invisible Children
• Non-discrete U.S. military intervention, leading to Kony changing tactics and escaping custody
• Using your child for personal and professional gain
• Playing with yourself in public

 What really gets to me about this video is it's shortsightedness.

Asshole. Not the deeper problem though.

Great, let's raise awareness about a horrible person and a wronged group of people. I'm all for it! What happens next is the problem. Actually it's what fails to happen next that's the problem.

Invisible Children's landmark video is extremely successful at using the web and social media channels to spread word about a brutal ex-dictator. Tens of millions of YouTube views in a matter of days is no small feat. The video is well put together and tells an emotionally engaging story about the plight of Uganda under Kony. It actually fosters self-efficacy in its viewers (meaning those who watch it actually feel like caring can make a difference). It doesn't make me depressed. It "feels good man."

So I'm aware of Joseph Kony now. Everyone I know is aware. What next? OK, so I buy this $5 kit with posters and stickers and the like. Then I'm supposed to plaster the community around me with Kony 2012 propaganda to... raise... awareness... Because the goal of this movement is to "shine a light on Joseph Kony." Do you understand what I'm getting at yet?

This whole campaign is designed to raise awareness and fails to promote the next steps to actually address the problem. What about intent? What about execution? What about reflection? This is marketing 101 people. The problems in Uganda are not going to be fixed by just awareness in the United States. There needs to be follow up steps that have tangible results. The campaign is efficient, but not effective.

My argument goes along with the notion that social media and constant information [maybe don't cause, but certainly] promote short attention spans. We get so hyped up on being in the know about the latest craze that we rarely have the time to mature our interest in the previous one. I hear plenty about Kony nowadays, but seldom do I hear mention of Japan's recovery from the Fukushima Daiichi catastrophe. What about the earthquakes in Haiti and Indonesia that together killed more than half a million people? Those were popular topics to care about at one time too.

This video is a tennis ball and we are the dog playing fetch. We get all worked up about it for a while, but then we get tired or we see a squirrel over yonder and our attention is quickly broken. There will be another disaster or social issue this year that will attract a ton of attention/sympathy and the Kony 2012 movement will fade. It's an election year: attention spans don't exist anyway.

It really bothers me that mere awareness is suggested to be the answer to solving a complex global issue. I do believe that the more complicated a problem is the simpler the answer ought to be, and Invisible Children supplies a simple answer. They fail to ask if this is the right simple answer though. You could say that putting Kony behind bars is the eventual goal of this campaign. Still, Kony and the LRA are symptoms, not the problem behind it. The ICC wanted list is not just one name. There are villains like Kony all over the world and every time one is removed another is there to take his/her place. For all the attention this campaign is getting, it's a shame that the intent is so limited. Maybe the question we should be asking isn't "how do we put Joseph Kony on trial at the Hague?" but instead one of thew following:

• How do we get the United States to support the International Criminal Court?
• How do we reduce drought and famine in sub-Saharan Africa (the leading causes of genocide and war in the third world)?
• How do we change our nation's attitude to international intervention beyond economic interests?
• How do we raise Western knowledge about the geographical and cultural nuances within the African continent so that things don't get ignored until dictators are placed on a most wanted list?

When we don't solve the root of the problem, the problem will adapt and return in stronger form. Joseph Kony, congratulations, the world is aware of you. Too bad you're not the root issue.

I won't contribute to more views to the Kony 2012 video, but you can see what Ugandans think of it.

I'm actually relieved to see so much public criticism of the video. However, I think that much of it is from social pressure to stick with the popular opinion, just like the wavelike fervor in support of the video in it's earliest days. Social media and my generation has a lot of potential behind it, but we're still maturing. We may have found our purpose, but we can't stop there. We need to get beyond awareness.

Northwest Region is Northbest Region

Kappa's case competition team took first at Reno PBLI this weekend. Pretty amazing experience. Here's some takeaways from the last month and a half:

 Don't just look at a solution to a problem. Look for the underlying systems that affect it.

Cherish the work groups that treat you well and put a full effort in. Thank you so much team!

Whiteboards are awesome. I wish everything was a whiteboard.

A business problem does not need to be dry. You can always shape it into a story and connect emotionally with people.

Addressing interpersonal conflict opens the door to success in work tasks. Be understanding and treat people as human beings.

If you want to do well, rehearse a presentation until you want to kill yourself and everyone else in the room. Everyone take a break and let loose for a little. Then rehearse some more.

Note cards can be acceptable when used properly.

If you prepare enough, you will be proud of the work you did regardless of the outcome.

Winning is the greatest feeling in the world. Let no one tell you otherwise.

That moment of anxiety during the results announcement seems to go on forever.

A Stanford team is not all powerful.

Neither is the other Stanford team.

Prepare for technical disaster. If it happens, you're ready. Handle it calmly and everything will be alright.

Craps is still totally my game on the casino floor.

Engage your audience, even when you're just delivering a proposal. Find memorable ways to do it.

Learning something is great, but applying it is even better.

When you have a special opportunity like this, enjoy the ride. You have to go back to the real world soon enough.

Tis The Season To Be Negative

In a way, the residents of blue Oregon are lucky in 2012. This is not because Oregon has an overwhelming liberal majority, but simply because an obvious majority exists. Unlike swing states in an election year, we witness a seemingly reserved number of political attack ads. It's just not cost effective to fight the numbers if victory is highly unlikely.

But Oregonians are still aware of what the commercial airwaves turn into as the country approaches election day. It's gotten worse every year, and this year shows no signs of changing direction. Super-PAC's have drastically changed the form campaigning takes in the U.S. It's ugly out there and it's only going to get worse. Reading this Feb 13, 2012 article in The New Yorker got me thinking about parts of the pre-election system that grind my gears (all political beliefs aside).

Due to the political nature of negative political advertisements, they receive the highest level of protection under the First Amendment. You would think political free speech would always be a good thing, right? Well it also means that lying and misguiding is perfectly legal. As a result, the public is subject to six or more months of crude manipulation, often through flat out falsities. In an era where trust in businesses and politicians are at an all time low, its beyond disturbing to find that there's no burden of truth standing between candidates and control.

Political advertising has taken such a positive tone in America...

The man leading the Mitt Romney proxy campaign through Restore Our Future (he's one of three directors and the recipient of all the business) is Larry McCarthy. McCarthy is the mastermind behind the racially charged Willie Horton spot that supposedly sunk Dukakis is 1988, as well as countless other negative ads. He is dubbed "the attack ads go-to guy" by Politico and is deeply involved with every on and off election race. One of my overarching arguments for brands is that every touch point of the experience should ring true with the brand. Mitt Romney has positioned himself as the outsider in the Republican primaries. Unlike his counterparts, Romney has never spent time in Washington, and he is keen to use that as a weapon. However, McCarthy and his pseudo agency are in the heart of D.C. and is a master at playing the political games of Capitol Hill. There is a gap between the McCarthy line and the Romney line, leaving a critically thinking citizen wondering what the Romney message really is.

 Little accountability and even less truth has become the norm.

Attack ads usually look bad. You can see it coming before the dialogue even begins. They paint the world as good versus evil and tend to treat viewers as idiots. They look like cruddy PowerPoint presentations. Yet they work. Even when people don't think they work, they work. So for all the effectiveness, why don't we see this style of advertising in other sectors? It would certainly cut through the clutter. Still, the shear tone of it would probably offend people. Attack ads were originally regarded as horrendous, but have since become expected. The vulgarity is now ignored, and they work instead. Still, politicians are fleeting brands in the minds of consumers. Every few years they receive lots of attention and everyone seems to have an opinion, but it fades away quickly after election day. Each election season, candidates can choose to start fresh and re-brand themselves how it suits the times; the public tends to go with it. The brands we brush up against every day don't enjoy this luxury. Organizations that offer products and services need to maintain their brand persona 24-7, otherwise they risk losing long time supporters.

In February of this year AdAge heralded the top ten political ads of all time. Six of them were of a very negative tone. In Iowa alone 73% of the political spots were attack ads last December. What if all advertising was this negative? What if 60-73% of all messages from businesses were vilifying attacks on competitors? I think it would have a terrible effect of the psyche of the entire nation. We'd all be pissed off and judgmental around the clock as a result of seeing nasty messages everywhere we looked. Every fourth November the country gets swept up in the negativity of a black and white political fever. I shudder to think what our world would look like if the messaging from political campaigns spread to other parts of communication.


McCarthy says he's trying to make “what every ad guy is seeking: the Holy Grail of the perfect spot.” I guess I'm no ad guy in his book then. I'm seeking to make the world a better place and advertising is a way of getting there. Shit-slinging like this is not on my agenda.

Why Ad Belongs In The SOJC

This post is in response to an opinion piece by Jonathan Bowers in the January 11, 2012 issue of the Oregon Daily Emerald.

Once again, the study/profession of "advertising" has received the scorn of nobler studies in the academic world. Jonathan Bowers, a journalism graduate student, argues that advertising and public relations are ill-placed in the School of Journalism and Communication because of their commercial nature. From Mr. Bower's perspective, J-School students "are taught how to be media-savvy and critical of what information is presented to them," and apparently the programs in question don't fit into that model. I couldn't disagree more.

Whereas I can't speak on behalf of public relations, the advertising program at the UO strives to teach its students to reach beyond moving products off shelves. Instead, those in the program are guided to bring new value to consumers (a.k.a. citizens) in ways beyond mere advertising and marketing. The Oregon SOJC is where that mentality is fostered.

SOJC Core Values Synonymous With Advertising's (at least what they should be)
Mr. Bowers views the role of the SOJC to be to "develop sharp, critical thinkers who look at information provided to them with a skeptical eye instead of blindly taking information provided to them." I see no harm in this outlook. But I don't see any reason why future adwomen and admen should be excluded from it. As distributors of information, advertisers should hold a high level of responsibility to those who receive it; this requires a critical view of the messages they are to convey. Just as traditional journalists a charged with a lofty ethical responsibility to the public, so should advertisers, perhaps even more so being the content is tied so strongly to private interests. I would have no desire to associate with the ad world were this duty of ethical and critical thought non-existent in its education. On the other end, don't think I have a delusional perspective of advertising as an ethically iconic industry with its primary job being to save consumers from malicious corporate entities. Advertising is commercial in nature. The critical approach to information taught in the SOJC is very much in the best interest of businesses as well.

Spoiler Alert: Business leaders don't always know what's best for their organizations. Confidence and self-affirmation are so important to business leadership in many managers' minds that they turn a blind eye to most insights that challenge the status quo. Challenging "the way it's done" is risky and risk is unwanted in commerce. So if every partner along the way simply agrees with the usual plan of action you can guess what the result often turns out to be. Hint: it's brown, steaming, and smells really really bad. The advertising industry is a two-way street, connecting the citizens to the people selling stuff. Advertisers are distributors of information to both sides (believe it or not) and often are positioned perfectly to redirect businesses away from harmful or otherwise worthless products, practices, and mentalities. Without a educational foundation in critical thinking and to the duties owed to the public, advertisers are just more yes-men in the machine and serve no benefit to consumers or commercial entities.

Business School Is A Worse Fit
To say that advertising being a branch in the Lundquist College of Business is "right up their alley" is an incredibly misinformed assumption. As I described before, even though the end goals of the two may be similar, the basis for getting there couldn't be more different: one creative, the other analytical; one public, the other private. Just because the two will work together in the future doesn't mean that they need to be taught the same material in the same building. Engineers are integral parts of many businesses. Does that mean our science majors should join the LCB? What about future doctors, designers, and musicians? They provide much of the content of enterprises, much like the professionals in agencies. Having divergent backgrounds in a working environment is perhaps the biggest key to success in organizations everywhere; advertising and business studies are not exempt to this. Conjoining the advertising program with the business school would be better than making the program separate from everything, but still remains worse than leaving it where it is.

An ad program based in the LCB would be bad for students, businesses, and the public.

 

Segregating Our Studies Is Beneficial To No One
The general lack of partnership between the LCB and the SOJC makes me sad. When I was studying music I was instructed that the only learning worth my time was within the School of Music's walls. I've since realized to ignore the walls. Curiosity and growth is too often limited in the university sphere to imaginary lines called "majors." The greatest results of history are achieved through the combination of linear, analytical processing and radical, intuitive creativity. Unfortunately the attitudes of the students between the two schools I'm mostly involved with now tend to stick to segregated stereotypical extremes. Business majors think that they aren't wired for creativity and that creatives are a bunch of hipsters with monster egos. Advertising students see mathematical thinking as something that escaped them in middle school and that Lillis is full of a bunch of uptight "suits." We should be reaching out more to studies and lifestyles unlike our own, not pushing them away. This is not a problem limited to this department relationship nor one to be solved by moving the location of a program. The issue is institutional, or maybe even human.


The whole concept of "schools" and "majors" is a little bull (to me at least) at times. They give structure and direction to many otherwise lost students, but they are restrictive to learning and open mindsets in a community full of young potential. I can understand Mr. Bower's frustration with the presence of advertising and public relations in a school of journalism (less so when I found that courses in ethics are not required of any student there). Still, I see proposing that a particular program should be removed from your college because it doesn't exactly match your purest vision of the craft is close-minded and stands to damage the education of more than just journalism students. What harm does the advertising program do to the rest of the SOJC other than slightly taint an idealistic view of journalism and communication academia? What does any program stand to gain from such an isolationist and exclusive standpoint?

Our world is not a collection of silos. 
It is a complex network of differences and similarities.

I would love to see more collaboration between the J-School and the business school at the university without changing what makes each college great. It would add to the learning experience of both sides. Meanwhile it would be a shame to see the ad program get run out of the SOJC. The core values that make the school make the ad program great. Taking away the advertising program would take away from the learning experience of advertising students and others in the journalism school, regardless of where the program went. It certainly wouldn't make for a better University of Oregon or a better world.

Is the SOJC the perfect place at the UO for the advertising program? Perhaps not. But does the SOJC provide an education better suited for the industry and a progressive world than under the business school without infringing on the education of others? I see no reason pointing to no. So to Mr. Bowers, I encourage you to take another hard look at what damage the advertising program is doing to the SOJC. I think there is far more at stake than just the definition of "communication."

Besides, I have a hard time believing that most anyone in the SOJC would fit well into required business classes like supply chain management. Business students can hardly stand it.