Me in D.C.

So I'm going back to my alma mater next Tuesday to present to the Georgetown Graduate Marketing Association. The theme of my talk, as requested by the co-President of the GMA, is How To Review An Ad. It seems that when brand management (brand marketing) companies like P&G, J&J, Unilever, and others come to campus to recruit a question they all ask is: What advertising do you think is good and why? And Georgetown's b-school students feel unprepared to answer (especially first-year's and and career switchers). As I understand it, the MBA program has a great global perspective and strong finance track, but lacks a diverse offering of marketing-focused classes. In particular for these future brand managers, their marketing concentration rarely gets advertising-specific - and these are the people who will be assesssing our creative.

Thus, I'm going back to school to give them some tools and language that will help them feel more comfortable speaking about advertising. So they can get the summer internship that leads to the full-time job next year over those Wharton snobs. In all seriousness, I'm excited about the opportunity and just sad I'm missing homecoming this weekend.

I plan on sharing the presentation soon. If anyone's in DC Wednesday morning and wants to meet up for breakfast, I'm free so shoot me a note.

My First Rehearsal

I've been hesitant to write about this—in fact, even thinking about writing gives me butterflies. Well, first I wasn't going to tell people that I was trying out (or in more proper but less macho terms, auditioning) because I didn't think I would be selected. They gave options. Write and read a less than 5-minute piece about your Birthright Israel experience or perform a memorized piece about anything. Oh, and send in your theater resume if you have one. Huh? I almost gave up there, but decided that opportunity to work with Vanessa Hidary (a Def Jam poet) was a potential experience worth the embarrassment. So on I wrote, read, and received - an email back stating that I was selected.

Tonight's the first rehearsal and it's fair to say I'm scared shitless. I don't know if the fact that it's a group rehearsal makes it better or worse. I guess it depends on how many of these people have that theater resume they asked for.

I'm not ready to share that piece yet, but maybe I'll feel differently after tonight. I'm not sure if that's what I'll be performing or if I'll be asked to write something else. I guess I'll just have to see. I'm not ready to send out the performance info either...but that I'm sure I'll pass on close to the date in early November. And lastly, far be it from me to give advice, but I do want to mention two things:

1. As uncomfortable as this whole process (mostly, the idea of performing spoken word poetry) makes me so far even the act of auditioning was rewarding. It felt like pretty good public speaking practice if nothing else. So, I'm of course not the first to encourage anyone reading this to try things outside of your comfort zone, and I surely won't be the last.
2. The process of creating something from scratch was extremely rewarding. Every once in a while I'll start with a blank piece of paper, word doc or powerpoint for work, this blank blog post rectangle even. But even in almost all of those cases I have an idea of what I'm going to write - some slides to recycle from presentations past, google to search for topic pov's, a link or video to embed. I don't draw or sew or build (Ikea furniture doesn't count, and even if it did, I don't think I could count it), and I only had my own mind as a resource/to get me through this exercise. It was worth it even if I hadn't gotten picked (but then who knows if you'd ever know :)).

Anyway, I'll keep you posted but in the meantime would love to hear any similarly rewarding stories (comment or shoot me an email - seth.gaffney@gmail.com).

Inbox of Immaturity: The Onion Comeback

Rather than pass on "stupidifying" video links this week, I'm going to make you read as well as hit you off with a Gen GuY observation. I'm just one person (just a man, with a man's courage...oh f'in Flash) so take it for what it's worth, but I believe The Onion is heating up online. Hey, maybe it never got cold. But I haven't had an article passed onto me in months and then all of a sudden I've got these three in my inbox/message board/rss feed from three very different social groups.
Pitchfork Give Music a 6.8
Bro, You're a God Among Bros
I'm Like a Chocoholic But for Booze

Yes one is older than the others, but still received all three within this past week from Noah, Paul, and James. I'm still sticking to F Everything, We're Going Wtih 5 Blades as my personal favorite, but these are definitely solid. Thus, as the brand onion seems to fade into oblivion, The Onion is so hot right now. The Onion.

Freestyle Walking

I thought this was a well-known "sport." But when I showed some people my pics from San Diego recently, they thought I was a perv that randomly snaps shots of teenage boys. So to clarify and educate...

From Wiki:

The art of freestyle walking (loosely related to Free Running) is a means of self-expression and creative interaction with one's environment. Many of the practitioners of this art form (or sport, as some consider) excelled at the sport by freestyle walking to find more full involvement with their otherwise routine surroundings. Freestyle walkers use leaps and air moves, clever footwork, dance or any non-traditional walking movement. Today, many practitioners view it as the act of rollerblading or skateboarding without the skates or board.

Here is the image referenced above of freestyle walking in action:

Note I was actually running when I took this picture. I'm not the first to say that running is a great way to get acquainted with a city, especially a new one (and it was my first time in SD). But back to the freestyle walking - in case you want to get schooled, here's its most prestigous University. See we don't just game and blog. Such a great example of creative activity or active creativity. Or just living fun. I love this stuff.

U.S. (of American Express) Open

By now, you've all heard the phrase Branded Utility. To recap, it refers to brands creating something that is useful to their customers. It's not only a response to the spam that is most advertising, but also a way to take advantage of the tools provided us by new technologies, specifically web 2.0. Most of all, it is the challenge and vision to make things that people really want and need; that have real value to them.

We've seen more examples of this type of branded utility lately, with Charmin's Times Square toilets to Nike+(iPod). These types of branded utilities pull in customers, rather than push a message out to them. It makes a deeper connection with them or becomes more integrated in/important to their lives. So if that is the goal, then the strategy is to understand people better and discover meaningful ways in which they can contribute to their lives. Arguably this should be easier for the customers a brand already has, but sometimes these are the people that feel ignored as brand look to get more awareness, more trial, and more acquisition.

However, over the course of the two-week U.S. Open, I saw and took part in a brand executing on the idea of branded utility to near perfection. That brand was American Express. Amex has long been a sponsor of the U.S. and long had an obvious presence on the grounds; yet, these past couple of years they have leveraged a major sponsorship in a bar-setting way. Instead of being happy with logos galore and a couple of booths, they have extended this through truely valuable brand experiences...and they have made both their customers feel valued and provided utility to all tennis fans.

This year, they offered branded utility in two main places: Flushing Meadows (the tournament site) and Madison Square Park and Rockafeller Center (in Manhattan).On the Open grounds, two things (utilities) really stood out: Radios at the Open with commenting by John McEnroe and TVs for other courts for cardholders. Additionally, cardholders got access to advance ticket sales (a utility for cardholders) and the U.S. Open club for eating better food with less of a wait.

In Madison Square Park, the main attraction was their live screening of the tournament on a big screens, where on those beautiful days (which lucky for the Open organizers, all of them were) people gathered to watch together. They had big tourney drawsheets up as well. Additionally, however, they offered all park-goers the opportunity to get an on-site Serve Analysis from a tennis pro as well as the video tape sent with more comments. Sure the comments are the same for everyone through email, but you get and have the video forever.

So you can tell I'm a fan of how Amex made being useful a priority. My only question is: Did all this utility come at the cost of entertainment? Of course, they had an amazing on-site presence for the over 650,000 attendees (it is the most attended annual sporting event in the world). But should Amex have spent a little more money trying not to annoy the around 100 million people who tuned in (many for most days and nights) with the same Johnny Mac commercial at every break for two whole weeks of matches? (By the way, is dispute resolution the most important message for Amex to get out these days? And if so, wouldn't have sponsoring the ball cam and challenges been more appropriate? They couldn't have outbid chase, who now has a 5-year deal on the review cam?)

Either way, I applaud Amex - tennis clap...and it seems to be applying this same customer understanding to other areas of business. Recently I read on Zeus Jones that Amex's iPhone price protection covers the recent drop in price.

If anyone has other example of Amex's branded utility at the U.S. Open or otherwise, or of the exact opposition behavior or policies at Amex, please comment below. (Sorry for all the or's. Oops I did it again.)