For quite awhile the typical way to get a job was to search online (craigslist, careebuilder, etc…), tailor your cover letter to that specific company, send them your cover letter and resume, wait for a response, go through a couple interviews, and then hopefully, get offered a job. That’s the way I did it just two years ago when I was looking for a new job at a marketing agency in San Diego.

But now, people are starting to do different things to stand out or get their foot in the door. Most commonly, people are joining social networks or attending events where they can meet professional connections.

The other day while I tweeting at work (shhh don’t tell the boss) I came across an interesting tweet by atlanta978 about how people are displaying their resume and/or cover letter on themselves. Well, not directly on their skin or anything, but on a “resume tshirt“. Interesting idea was my initial reaction. If you need a job or need to promote yourself, why not walk around in a shirt that displays all your amazing qualifications. You never know who you’ll meet while you’re out.

But then I got to thinking. You don’t really need a shirt to promote yourself. You are promoting who you are 24/7. You don’t need a special shirt to show what type of personality you have, people can tell from what you are wearing and from the first 20 seconds you talk to them. You don’t need a shirt to list your qualifications or why you would make a good employee, once again, people will have a general idea of how you work and the type of person you are just from talking to you.

I think these days don’t just wear a shirt telling people they should hire you,  walk directly up to them and tell them why they have to hire you.

Final thought. The text on these shirts is so small. Wouldn’t it be really funny to see someone walking down the street in one of these and then someone right behind them with a magnifying glass trying to read the back? Why make it difficult for someone to see why you are so great?

Well, sort of…

Aside from saving the economy and fighting for world peace, we will also be spending the next four years over-analyzing and debating Michelle Obama’s right to bare arms.

Everyone from the NY Times Caucus blog, NPR and Wall Street Journal to the Huffington Post, Vanity Fair and Vogue are fascinated by the First Lady’s wardrobe choices. I like that she supports up-and-coming fashion designers, in addition to being a runway inspiration.

I mean, is it written somewhere that the First Lady has to wear pastel church suits?

As I work in the creative business, I support her pushing-the-envelope kind of style.   Good for her for breaking the rules (if such a church-suit rule exists).

Disagree? Let me know. I find the “supporters of the stuffy suit” arguments quite amusing.

That Ted Geisel really rocks.  I mean think about it — all his books relate in some way to the global challenges we face today. And it some twisted way, I’m finding direct correlation to the work we do in the marketing, advertising, public relations, social media agency business.

Last night as I read The Lorax to my two little girls, it was so crystal clear that Dr. Seuss was an oracle, a true futurist who clearly saw the world and how to explain it in the simplest of terms.  He was the Malcolm Gladwell of his day, and I’m glad I got to meet him before he passed away (he and his widow were/are longtime residents of La Jolla).

Think about it.  The Lorax is basically a more concise, better illustrated version of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Dr. Seuss teaches us from childhood that the environment is something worth standing up for.

Horton Hears a Who?  Why, that’s about believing in something when no one else does, and being willing to risk your own reputation to protect it.  Kinda like Obama right now.  Or the Bailey Gardiner team with some of our clients.

And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street is another of my favorites.  It’s about using your imagination to make ordinary things seem exciting, bigger than life, just plain MORE. Sounds like the kid in this book has a future in marketing.

Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? is about feeling empathy and compassion for others less fortunate than yourself.

Green Eggs & Ham is about being willing to take risks and try new things – even if you have to do it on the train or in the rain.  But it’s also a copywriter’s dream – the whole book uses a total of only 50 words in various combinations.

Remember?

I would not, could not, in a box.
I could not, would not, with a fox.
I will not eat them with a mouse.
I will not eat them in a house.
I will not eat them here or there.
I will not eat them anywhere.
I do not eat green eggs and ham.
I do not like them, Sam-I-am.

And The Grinch?  Well, The Grinch.  This classic doesn’t really have to be about Christmas at all. It could be Easter or Kwaanza or Passover or Halloween — it’s about humankind’s ability to overcome adversity and celebrate something we believe in, with or without the trappings.  Again, a lot like working in a creative agency.  Adversity?  We got it.  Trappings?  Not often.  But believing in something?  We’re lucky enough to work with clients that give us something to believe in every day.

Even though some days I feel more like the Grinch than a Who.

Thanks Ted.  You rock.

.

I was flipping through the Wall Street Journal for a particular article, obviously wanting nothing to do with advertisements, when I was drawn – like Augustus Gloop to the chocolate river – to a Microsoft advertisement. I think it’s clear why:

I didn’t scribble on it – they did. And you can bet I pieced together those non-scribbled out words (see the white spots?) into a sentence, which reads, “It’s Everybody’s Business to be on the same page.”

I was so intrigued in fact, that I read the article behind the red ink! The outrageous subject matter (stop communicating as a business and you’ll be more successful) led me on to the fact that it was fake. The kicker was the last few paragraphs, “How can you motivate others? Complaining is usually a great bet.” “If you need to convey complex information, try reading it from a small, crumpled piece of paper.” You get the point.

So now I’m really into it. So into it that I visited the advertisement’s Microsoft website. Cool ad Microsoft, you REALLY got me!

Of course I’m a member of the “millennial generation” so I have no patience. I found a video and decided to watch it so I could give you a great analysis of their fantastic advertisement and what lengths I went through to learn more. But uh-oh! Only version 1.0 of Microsoft Silverlight supports the Macinitosh PowerPC! The site I visited was built for an earlier, beta version of Silverlight – not the current one. I need to contact the site owner.

Welp, you lost me there. We’re not on the same page anymore. I realize I’m a Mac and you’re a PC. There’s a good chance we’re not going to get along. But you led me all this way, and I really wanted to communicate with you. How ironic. It was a good ad anyway. If anyone out there on a PC wants to tell me what it’s all about, that’d be swell. Swell like Violet Beauregarde after the blueberry bubble gum.

You may have recently seen the Chevy Silverado commercials that ran during the NFL Playoffs. In said spots, man’s man Howie Long rips on non-Silverado truck owners by pointing out new features on their trucks (that the Silverado lacks) as if having those features on their trucks makes them less of a man. The spot that stands out most rips on the new F-150 for having a “man step.” While the spot is funny, the strategy is garbage. I equate it to the class bully that stuffs you in a locker because you’re smart and he’s stupid.

It’s a flawed strategy for many reasons. One is that a single truck company cannot exclusively own “manly.” All trucks are inherently manly. It’s not like there’s a truck out there that bakes cookies. Two, if a truck has features your truck doesn’t have, you my friend, are the one with an inferior product. Trying to cover that up with shallow marketing is just an insult to your target. Maybe in Don Draper’s day, this would have flown, but as I think I’ve mentioned in the past, today’s consumers are way smarter than they used to be. Three, Chevy is being a hypocrite. They make fun of their competition for having features designed to make life easier, but they turn around and introduce a “torque rod” designed to assist you with closing the tailgate. If I’m supposed to be a real man with my Silverado I want the tailgate to damn near give me a hernia, damnit.

I’m pretty sure I could find some more luxury features inside the Silverado if I looked; features my grandpa’s truck didn’t have when he was running the family’s sheepherding business. Now there was a real man. “Seatbelts?!!! Sissy shit. If I can’t survive a little crash I don’t deserve to live.” And so to Chevy, if you are going to bash Motor Trend’s Truck of the Year, at the very least, introduce a truck that lines up with your strategy. Oh wait – it does. Poor truck. Poor strategy.

Check it!

Some very smart brand manager at Tropicana must be a diligent reader of our agency blog, because they have heeded our expert marketing and branding advice.  After numerous posts here about the new Tropicana juice packaging design, and what a disconnect it is with the brand heritage and consumer appeal, lo and behold the Tropicana brand gods have decided to reverse their decision and go back to the original packaging.

Read more about this striking decision in this New York Times article on Tropicana packaging.

Just goes to show you, the brand strategists at Bailey Gardiner aren’t just blogging for blogging sake.

Now, for our next prediction.  We believe Electra Bicycles will be the #1 bike brand in the US within the next 5 years.  (They jumped from #14 to #7 last year alone). Disclaimer — we are proud to count Electra as one of our favorite clients and plan to share in their success as they reach this very achievable goal.

Check back for more on the future after these messages from our sponsors….

Career Builder, Hyundai, and Snuggie would agree.

A recent Advertising Age article reported that Career Builder saw a 63% increase in job applications after their Super Bowl commercial.

In a recent post about Tailoring Your Marketing Message in a Recession, our Associate Creative Director wrote about Hyundai running a smart and focused campaign called “Assurance.” While the general vehicle market was down 34% in January, they were up 14%!

Snuggie, the “blanket with arms,” launched last October, just as the economy slowed. They took advantage of remnant media space and have created a cult following. They have sold 4 million Snuggies!

Moral of the story: You still have to spend money to make money.

Those Amish are a tricky bunch.

All this time we thought they eschewed modern technology and rolled around town in horse drawn buggies and old-fashioned clothes with no zippers.  And really, they have been singlehandedly saving the advertising industry by marketing their revolutionary new product, the Amish Space Heater.  Full page ads have been placed in such publications as the New York Times, National Geographic and even our venerable San Diego Union-Tribune, not to mention late night infomercials on a variety of cable outlets.

Let’s do a little math on that.  In our local fishwrap, a full page 4-color Sunday ad costs around $80,000.  I’ve counted at least a dozen insertions since I first noted the ad, so 12 x $80,000 = $960,000, and this is in the local San Diego paper alone.

And check out how many Google items turned up on the search terms “Amish Space Heater” — about 376,000 and counting.

Plus there seem to be a number of devotees on YouTube who are playing with the concept, the ultimate compliment.  No worries that the “Amish” are actually building the mantle portion of the heater, and the interior working parts are manufactured by certainly non-Amish workers in China somewhere.

Maybe this is the next Snuggie marketing sensation, and I say more power to them.  If those Amish folk want to infuse a bunch of their cash into the ad industry and help save it from the brink, I say go for it.

And for all the jokes about the simple Amish ways, they are probably laughing all the way to the bank (or the dollar-stuffed mattress as the case may be).

.

Some may claim that there is no wrong way to use Twitter. These are probably the same people that think all press is good press, and these people are wrong. While there may be no one right way to tweet, there is in fact, a wrong way. Here’s an example:

Check out @tayswift’s Twitter page. This would be the personal Twitter page of new singer/starlet Taylor Swift. Now to be fair, I commend the star for running her own page (and it is painfully obvious that she does) but I have to question how her manager or publicist hasn’t stepped in and done some advising. In my opinion, a relatively new star could really benefit from using Twitter, rather than alienating or boring her followers.

My first problem lies in the fact that Tay has almost 5,000 people following her and is following back 14. 14?!! And who might you ask are among those 14 crucial people she has chosen to follow? Starbucks, MTV, Britney Spears, and Selena Gomez. Apparently a bunch of corporate/pr run Twitter sites are more interesting to follow than me. I am left feeling like Taylor has no desire for two way communication with me and her fans. . .the little people.

I suppose that would be alright if she was providing me with some extremely interesting insights. I understand that you can’t follow everyone, and I will continue to follow people not following me if I view them as a resource. However, Taylor’s tweets reading “listening to music on my ipod; so sleepy” and “Just woke up. had dinner with sel, david, and demi last night, so fun!” are not only crimes against grammar, but just plain boring.

The end result is that I have less than warm and fuzzy feelings towards Taylor. When her song comes on the radio, I find myself pushing the button to change the station. Now I am not a publicist for any celebrities, (yet!) but I am pretty sure that is never the goal.

I do, however, wish young Taylor the best of luck and I am hoping someone out there has, at the very least, set up google alerts to monitor her name. Perhaps her publicist is unaware of the Twitter situation and will now take steps to remedy it. Maybe they’ll even turn it around, so that Taylor is using Twitter as a tool to connect with people, thus creating “brand” evangelists, and securing her fame for a little longer than the customary 15 minutes.