There has been lots of focus lately in the marketing/social media communities about how you should or should not use social media.  I personally find the endless rules and regulations constricting, and against what social media is really about – being social and interacting with other people.

Social media is the most transparent of all media.  It’s about you, the individual, and we are all different.  So why should one person’s social media rules be your rules?  In the real world we all communicate differently, and the same should go for the social media world.

Case in point:  On Twitter, @shitmydadsays has only tweeted 22 times and already has 153,245 followers.  He is following one person.  He doesn’t retweet anyone.  He doesn’t reply to anyone.  He breaks all the Twitter etiquette rules and still has a huge following that grows by the day.  Why?  He is funny.  He tweets hilarious quotes his 73 year-old dad says.  I don’t care if he thanks me for retweeting him or follows me back.  He provides comical relief and has amassed a huge following of people who just want to hear his tweets regardless of his etiquette.

I think the only real rule to social media is to figure out what works for you.   Everyone has different goals, a different voice, and will inevitably need a different strategy and different tools to communicate your message effectively.   Figure out who you are, what you are trying to say, and whom you are trying to reach and you will pretty quickly figure out which rules work for you, and which don’t.

And don’t worry about pleasing everyone, just like in real life, you can’t.

Hot on the heels of our full-time graphic designer opening, Bailey Gardiner is also looking for a graphic design intern for the fall quarter/semester.
A little about you:

• A college student (junior or senior) majoring in graphic design, communication design or other applied graphic art
• Must be able to obtain college credit for the internship
• Willing to commit to a minimum of 15 hours per week, set hours are preferable
• Student portfolio of design work
• Working Knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite. Experience in Flash/Fireworks/Dreamweaver is a huge plus
• A well-organized, self-starter who shows ownership over assignments
• Some production experience preferred
• Excellent communication skills- both oral and written
• Eager to learn
• Creative

A little about your responsibilities:
Assist the creative team with the following:

• Assist team members in research, concept, design and mounting of logos, collateral pieces, websites, identity and stationery packages
• Accompany senior team members to photoshoots, press checks, client meetings and assist in photo and art research when necessary
• Must have a good attitude and aspire to do award-winning work

This position is unpaid and only open to current college students who can obtain college credit through the internship.

The experience you will receive at Bailey Gardiner is invaluable. We will take the time to teach, support, provide you with responsibility and have some fun.

For a little more information about us, visit our portfolio or the blog by our interns.
If you are interested, please email your student portfolio, cover letter and resume to nik@baileygardiner.com.

No phone calls please.

Captain Morgan Rum launched their new campaign, Calling All Captains, in May. This campaign is primarily aimed at reaching young adult males. Well, I’m a 26 year-old female and this campaign has definitely reached me as well. It’s fun, humorous and catches your attention.

In yesterday’s MediaPost Marketing Daily article by Karlene Lukovitz, I learned about the second phase of this campaign. All I can say is, I love it!

They have incorporated a “crazy nights begin and end with a good call” portion where people can select a prankster character, customize a voice message and then send it to a friend’s phone. People can choose from being an angry bartender that yells at you for stiffing him on a tab, a cute girl in a bar or an angry boyfriend.

This is a great way to get people to directly interact with your brand. I especially love how you can customize your message by including your friend’s name, what that person was wearing in the bar that night and your name. This does make it a lot more believable. And, this message automatically goes into a person’s voicemail, so you are guaranteed it gets there. Don’t worry, the message informs the recipient that this is a joke at the end of the message. We don’t want any angry boyfriends beating some guy up for no reason.

You know what this marketing campaign reminds me of? The “reject number” phase that was huge about 5 years ago. We’ve all had that uncomfortable experience when someone asks you for your number and you really don’t want to give it to them, but you just can’t say no. Well, they invented the rejection line for these instances. There are phone numbers for all the major US cities. When a poor person receives this phone number and calls it, they hear something along the following:

Hi, the person who gave you this number, does not wish to speak to you ever again. You have been rejected. To order business cards with this phone number press 1. To hear a cheer-up reject poem press 2.

The list goes on and on, but you get the point.

I know Captain Morgan’s campaign has a great strategy behind it and has helped their Facebook fan page reach about 111,000 fans. The reject line was just something fun that probably some high school kid came up with as a joke. I do wonder how much money he/she has made off reject business cards and swag though.

I love seeing how companies are constantly directly involving their consumers more and more. It’s the way the world is going. People don’t want to sit back and watch. They want to partake in what’s going on.

Image by √oхέƒx™ via Flickr

We don’t ask you for much do we? Read the blog. Comment if you have something to say. Share it on Twitter, StumbleUpon, Facebook, etc. if you like something we wrote. We try to add to your day, not your to-do list.

But today, we’re asking you to do something. Oy, I know…We are one of 29 agencies in the August roundup on Fuel Line’s Top Ad Agency Blog for the month of August. If you have enjoyed the blog’s humor, or learned something about social media, or discovered a great non-profit organization would you take a minute and vote for us? Wait wait, is that even a minute? If it’s not, you could vote and then post the link on Twitter so your friends know that you voted and they can vote too. OK, that would definitely be your minute. So we won’t ask for anything else. Nothing. At least for now. Just click here.

Bailey Gardiner is a creative agency.

We are a fast-paced shop with great clients seeking a talented graphic designer to join our growing creative department.

You have 2-3 years of agency experience and while you want to contribute immediately you know you still have lots to learn and want a place to do that. You can operate in the print environment, but have experience in and love the online world. From branding to collateral to web design, you are capable of working on a variety of design projects and enjoy a challenge.

You must be proficient in Adobe CS/CS2 Illustrator, Photoshop, and In Design. Production and file prep experience as well as working knowledge of Flash, Dreamweaver and Fireworks skills are a plus.

You like the idea of living in one of the most beautiful places in the country, getting paid a competitive salary, enjoying healthcare benefits, saving for your retirement (401k), benefiting from profit sharing and working with a dedicated, fun group.

Send your resume, portfolio, and salary requirements to resume@baileygardiner.com. You will not be considered without them. BFA preferred. No amateurs or self-taught graphic designers and no calls, please.

Lately I’ve met with quite a few people who want to talk to me about how I got into PR and how I landed a position at marketing agency Bailey Gardiner. Flattered that so many people want my job…I mean Bailey Gardiner is a pretty cool place to work. Outside networking and job hunting 2.0, I share with you, aspiring publicists, a few practices that worked for me:

•  Do your research. Learn about the PR/marketing industry, the agency for which you want to work and its clients, and get familiar with other agencies in the area.

• Read and watch everything. As PR professionals, we spend a good chunk of the day talking with media. So, we need to know what’s happening in the news. For me, this includes watching everything from Good Morning San Diego on KUSI and Good Morning America to Extra TV and E! News, and reading anything I can get my hands and eyeballs on from blogs, the New York Times and USA Today to Us Weekly and InStyle.

• Find an internship or schedule an informational interview. An internship is the easiest way to test the waters and see if public relations is the right industry for you. I had two PR internships before landing a full time position, and I’m grateful for those experiences. If there aren’t internship opportunities available, see if you can schedule an informational interview at an agency you’re interested in.

• Maintain your professional connections. I’ve kept in touch with marketing professors, past colleagues and former bosses. Whether it’s a friendly e-mail or lunch date, find a way to stay connected.

Anyone else have tips? Good luck, job hunters!

History is littered with examples of convergence for convenience. It’s what we do, right? We take two or more things, duct tape ‘em together, and (theoretically) make a better, more versatile thing as a result. I don’t think it’s too crazy to say that our tolerance for single-function tools is bookended by all the combo-inventions in our past, from the spork to the clock radio – and that tolerance is shrinking as the pace of technological progress has quickened.

Nowhere is this more evident than with our media and methods of communication, which are converging in geometrically accelerating cycles. A quick review of history shows us a pattern of each advance serving as an integral steppingstone to the birth of the next generation of communication tools. Allow me to elaborate:

First Cycle

• The printed newspaper, invented 1436
• The ‘Silent Pictures,’ invented 1888
• Radio, invented 1896

» Coexisted for 29 years before converging into the Television, invented 1925

Second Cycle

• Telephone, invented 1876
• Radio, invented 1896
• Silicon Chip, invented 1958

» Coexisted for 15 years before converging into the Cellphone, invented 1973

Third Cycle

• Cellphone, invented 1973
• Digital Camera, invented 1981
• PDA, invented 1983
• The Internet, invented 1983

» Coexisted for 10 years before converging into the Smartphone, invented 1993

Can you see where this is going yet? Well, hold on to your propeller hats, this is where it gets interesting.

It was in the late ’90s that the Internet really began to serve as a major communications vehicle, enabling people to share ideas and collaborate in ways that only spurred on these cycles of innovation and convergence:

Fourth Cycle

• IM, invented mid-1960s
• Email, invented 1965
• Search engines, invented 1991
• Blogs, invented 1994
• Web-based Forums, invented 1996
• RSS, invented 2002

» Coexisted for 4 years before converging into Twitter, invented 2006

Which brings us to today. Within a month or so, Google is poised to release what many are calling the next iteration of communications technology, named Google Wave. Concise definitions of what it actually is are hard to come by, which makes sense, because I think it’s basically the culmination of 573 years of media convergence (there, was that concise enough for you?):

Fifth Cycle

• IM, invented mid-1960s
• Web-based Email, invented 1995
• Wikis, invented 1995
• Facebook, invented 2004
• Twitter, invented 2006

» Coexisted for 3 years before converging into Google Wave, invented 2009

So where is this all heading? As with any trend, there’s always uncertainty just beyond the horizon. That said, it’s possible that each of these previous cycles have been building to one grand cycle that we can see happening right now:

Grand Cycle

• Written (Offline) information, invented 4th millennium, BC
• Digital (Online) information, invented 1937

» Coexisted for 62 years before converging into Augmented Reality, invented 1999

My advice? Don’t blink, because the next decade is going to be one hell of a ride.

What do you think? Any ideas as to what will be the result of the next media convergence cycle? Make yourself heard in the comments!

Many brands are just starting to build a facebook fan page and are looking for the best way to engage their  Facebook fans.  Most find that simply updating a status from time to time may not be enough to motivate fans to interact. Because of this, many companies have opted to use these pages as a place to run contests and have seen some awesome results. Businesses find that contests are perfect for Facebook because they are fun, they get fans involved and interacting with the page, and they have the potential to go viral.

*Update: Facebook has issued new guidelines for running a contest on your Facebook Fan Page. For more info on these changes, read here: New Rules for Facebook Contests – Does Your Brand Qualify?

All in all, a big win for brands.

That’s why, when our client Buzztime had a prize worth more than $12,000 dollars, we recommended starting a contest of its own on its Facebook fan page. The Buzztime Facebook contest will give the Buzztime team new and different content on the fan page and help them further develop the page for future fans. And by running it on its own page rather than somewhere else, it is not only giving back to the 1,300+ fans who already love them, but also reaching out to new fans and exposing them to its page.

So, you are wondering, what is this fabulous Facebook contest and can you enter? Yes, friends, you can. The details are below:

Buzztime is asking fans to create a video, less than 60 seconds, that shows either:

1. Your best victory dance or

2. Why You are the ultimate sports fan.

You can be submit your video until  11:59 PM on August 23 by uploading it directly to the Facebook Fan Page (www.facebook.com/buzztimegames). After August 23, the voting begins.

Starting August 24, Buzztime fans will vote for their favorite video by “liking” it, and the video with the most “likes” wins!

And what, exactly is this $12,000 prize you ask? Well, the winner and a friend will be flown to the Bahamas (yes, seriously) and will get to meet 25 top sports legends including Troy Aikman, Jerry West, Mike Ditka, Tony Hawk, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and Richard Petty. Not only will the winner get to spend 3 days at the glorious Atlantis resort, they will also receive a complimentary seat into the Sports Legends Challenge poker tournament where they will have a chance to win a million dollars. And all this, for simply uploading a video to Facebook.

So feel free to break out your flip cams and start rolling. This doesn’t need to be a high-tech production. Buzztime just wants to see people having fun, getting creative and engaging with its Facebook fan page.

And what about all of you business owners and marketing managers? Have any of your companies’ hosted Facebook contests before? Was it successful in reaching your goals and increasing fan interaction?

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Last week Google announced its new social gadgets for iGoogle. Given all the ways we already have to be social, I figured they’d do something competitively interesting, something I would want to add to my homepage. But, no.

I’m not sure what kind of world the people who work at Google live in, but spending 30 minutes playing Scrabble or Chess with a friend is not within the realm of possibility at this busy agency. And anyone who is using Twitter will find their Timeline offering completely lame. Why would we use Social Photos when we have Flickr? There is so little that is innovative or social about these gadgets that it kinda makes me wonder what they’re thinking over at the Googleplex. Anything to get in the game?

I know Google is continuously trying to find more ways to weave itself inextricably into our lives and become indispensable to life itself, but isn’t the search thing enough? It’s already the center of the online universe. Besides, isn’t the iPhone already that thing indispensable to life itself?

When opportunity strikes, you have to pounce.  Like a cougar.

At Bailey Gardiner the summer means Del Mar Racetrack season and Del Mar Racetrack Season means Cougars.  When we were told there would be a stakes race at Del Mar, the longest of the entire meet, and it would be called the Cougar II Handicap (after an old horse, Cougar II), we chuckled.  Then we pounced with the creation of the Miss Cougar Del Mar contest.  And what an opportunity it was!  Miss Cougar covered all the bases in local media with TV, radio, print and online interviews.  NBC San Diego has given her a shout out in their new TV commercial and just last week we got the call that she may be making an appearance on national TV.  The media coverage resulted in 28 submissions over only four days.  Now that’s success through the most obscure of marketing.

The week of Miss Cougar Del Mar was followed by yet another obscure opportunity.  The Travelocity Gnome was coming to San Diego and Del Mar was chosen as one of his destinations.  We were to coordinate the most quirky photo opportunities for the little wooden gnome, and that we did.

As our media is changing, we’re seeing a shift in what creates news.  No longer can we give the public information.  We must now give them something to talk about.  We love work like this because we value media opportunities outside of the traditional PR plan.  We value the opportunity to get people talking, to take a risk, and to have some fun.